Follow the Drinking Gourd by Jeanette Winter

A NOTE ABOUT THE STORY
    In the early days of slavery in the United States, many slaves tried to escape their cruel bondage by fleeing north—usually to Canada—to freedom. By the 1840s, a loosely organized group of free blacks, slaves, and white sympathizers formed a secret network of people and places that hid escaped slaves on their dangerous journey to freedom—a network that came to be known as the Underground Railroad.
    Traveling along darkened roads at night, hiding out by day, moving slowly upriver along hundreds of miles of connecting waterways, the fugitive slaves endured many hardships. Slave catchers hunted them down with dogs. Many were shot or hanged And even after crossing into the “free” states, runaway slaves could still be captured and returned to their masters for a reward.
    The most famous conductor on the Underground Railroad was Harriet Tubman, a runaway slave herself, who led hundreds of her people to freedom. Among other conductors, there was a onelegged sailor named Peg Leg Joe. Joe hired himself out to plantation owners as a handyman. Then he made friends with the slaves and taught them what seemed a harmless folk song—“Follow the Drinking Gourd.” But hidden in the lyrics of the song were directions for following the Underground Railroad. The Drinking Gourd is the Big Dipper, which points to the North Star. “When the sun comes back, and the first quail calls” meant spring, when travel might be least hazardous.
    As the runaway slaves followed the stars north, they would come across marks Peg Leg Joe had made in the mud or in charcoal on dead trees—a left foot and a peg foot—and they would know they were on the right trail.
    The river that “ends between two hills” was the Tombigbee River The second was the Tennessee River, and the “great big river” was the Ohio River, where Peg Leg Joe would be waiting to ferry them across to the free states on the other side. From there the fugitives were guided from one hiding place to the next until—with luck—they made it to Canada or other safe places in the North.

L ong ago,
    before the Civil War,
    there was an old sailor called Peg Leg Joe
    who did what he could to help free the slaves.

    Joe had a plan.
    He’d use hammer and nail and saw

    and work for the master, the man
    who owned slaves
    on the cotton plantation.

    Joe had a plan.
    At night when work was done,
    he’d teach the slaves a song
    that secretly told the way
    to freedom.
    Just follow the drinking gourd, it said.

    When the song was learned
    and sung all day,
    Peg Leg Joe would slip away
    to work for another master
    and teach the song again.

    One day
    a slave called Molly saw her man James
    sold to another master.
    James would be taken away,
    their family torn apart.
    Just one more night together.

    A quail called in the trees that night.
    Molly and James remembered Joe’s song.
    They sang it low.
    When the sun comes back, and the first quail calls,
    Follow the drinking gourd.
    For the old man is a-waiting for to carry you to freedom
    If you follow the drinking gourd.
    They looked to the sky and saw the stars.

    Taking their little son Isaiah,
    old Hattie, and her grandson George,
    Molly and James set out for freedom
    that very night,
    following the stars of the drinking gourd.

    They ran all night through the fields,
    till they crossed the stream to the woods.

    When daylight came, they hid in the trees,
    watching,
    listening
    for the master’s hounds
    set loose to find them.

    But the dogs lost the runaways’ scent
    at the stream,
    and Molly and James and Isaiah,
    old Hattie and young George,
    were not found.
    They hid all day in the woods.

    At night they walked again,
    singing Joe’s song
    and looking for the signs
    that marked the trail.
      
The riverbank makes a very good road,
      
The dead trees will show you the way.
      
Left foot, peg foot, traveling on,
      
Follow the drinking gourd.

    Walking by night, sleeping by day,
    for weeks they traveled